sun Apr 24, 2022 ▪ 11:00 am ▪
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CZ revealed on Twitter that Binance has recovered a tiny part of the stolen assets on Axie Infinity lately. $5.8 million of the $625 million stolen was seized after an attempt to launder it.
Beginning of the recovery of Axie Infinity’s assets?
Recently, we counted the assets that the Ronin hackers (Axie Infinity) could not launder: about $ 433 million. Because stealing is one thing, but making money accessible is another.
Reason why Lazarus Group has used ” more than 86 accounts “to be able to transfer some of his loot. Changpeng Zhao’s Tweet of April 22 highlighted this practice in addition to the announcement of the seizure of the $ 5.8 million recovered.
Here is the translation of CZ’s tweet :
« The DPRK hacker group began moving the stolen funds to Axie Infinity today. Part of it was transferred to Binance, spread over 86 accounts. $5.8 million was recovered. We have done this many times for other projects in the past too. Stay #SAFE. »
Lazarus Group is not on its first move. The counter of the North Korean hacker group, of course, includes several hacking acts. To quote only :
- the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 ;
- the Sony Pictures raid in 2014 ;
- cyber-attacks by pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca in 2020 ;
- etc.
At the end of March, the same group hit hard within the Ronin bridge, the blockchain that powers Axie Infinity. At the beginning of April, we discovered the broken pots and a laundering operation of about $ 7 million in cryptos on Tornado Cash. An operation that turned out to be easy since the latter presents itself as a tool capable of camouflaging transactions of this kind. Indeed, Tornado Cash can break the link between the source of funds and their destination.
The hacking of the Ronin Bridge
On March 23, hackers stole 173,600 ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USDC stablecoins from Ronin Bridge. Knowing that the latter is none other than the sidechain customized by Sky Mavis, connecting Axie Infinity to Ethereum.
Strangely enough, the theft was not recognized until 6 days later. And we had to wait another week to see Binance react. Because on occasion, this exchange had to raise a fund of $ 150 million with the support of Animoca Brands and a16z. This is how CZ wanted to ease the pain of the victims of the biggest hack in the history of cryptocurrencies. But this money will also be used to boost the security level of Ronin and Axie Infinity.
Note that SkyMavis called the Ronin Bridge hack a ” social engineering ». He blamed a small group of validators as the perpetrators of the security breach of the slidechain. After the $150 million has been raised, the Axie Infinity promoter intends to increase the number of validators from 5 to 20 in the next three months.
To say that last week, Sky Mavis challenged bounty hunter hackers. The one who will be able to identify the vulnerabilities” extraordinarily serious “on the Ronin bridge from Axie Infinity will have $ 1 million.
Source : CoinMarketCap
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